A Story about Music and Deportation

Late last Saturday night in a garden in Bakhchisaray, after we'd finished the shashlik, spicy carrots, garden tomatoes, pickled cabbage; after an impromptu drum circle began and ended; after we wished Anna well after her 2 years of Peace Corps service; after I played my Crimean Tatar repertoire through on a borrowed accordion and realized that the only "American" songs I actually know the words and chords to are obscure country tunes (which stifled the sing-along with other English-speakers & Peace Corp volunteers); after a taciturn man who used to practice the accordion for 3 or 4 hours a day in Uzbekistan but hadn't touched it in years finally picked it back up and we sang what we could; after we had cleared the tables and started goodbyeing, this same man told me a story about music and deportation:

When the night of the deportation came, a group of musicians from one particular neighborhood in Bakhchisaray were herded onto the same cattle car and transported to Uzbekistan. They all survived the journey, and their instruments survived too. Miracle. When they arrived in Uzbekistan, fatigued, starving, shaking, the local people - who had been led to believe by Soviet propaganda that the  Tatars had horns and were cannibals! - were understandably weary of the "special resettlers." But, despite their fatigue and their hunger, the musicians rallied and began to play a къайтарма, a typical Crimean Tatar dance. And, in the storyteller's words, "the people immediately understood what kind of people these were and greeted them with bread and water." 

In the years that followed, he said, "music became a way to keep our culture alive."

There is so much more to say about this. Crimean Tatars, having been erased as a nationality, wiped clean of the history books, faced with restricted mobility until Khrushchev's de-Stalinization period, used music as a mnemonic for more than lyrics, melodies, modes; music became a mnemonic for home.  

There is so much more to say about this and about everything, really. I have lapsed in my blogging. And while I want to apologize for this, in truth it's mostly a positive development, because I have been busy learning and talking and meeting people, so much so that by the time I get home I am often too exhausted to update the blog. But one day, it will all get written up in the dissertation, Inshallah.

Some highlights of late - including that wonderful farewell party in Bakhchisaray, which was more romantic than my description allowed (imagine stars and firelight and that early spring air) - include my first Crimean Tatar wedding and a visit to a small village to see a small Crimean Tatar children's ensemble. The latest setback - my computer erased its memory mysteriously two days ago, so I've been trying to inventory and mourn the damage.

But hey, this is exciting! Alison Cartwright, my old old friend and a great photographer, is coming out to Simferopol on May 2nd and we will commence our 3-week photo documentation and ethnography project on Crimean Tatar concepts of "home" 20 years after the right of return - and culminating on the Day of Deportation, May 18th. I imagine we will be busy, but there will also be a lot to report....